So this morning I woke up and read that Microsoft was "still working on" backwards compatibility for the XBox 360. And the console is due out in November. That's not a lot of time. It leads me to wonder how they're attempting to implement this backwards compatibility. Are they trying to emulate an original XBox? If so, I'm really not too optimistic about their chances of success. There are a lot of XBox games, and debugging an emulator to function properly with all of those is a massive task. When a game is first released, it is the onus of the developer to ensure it works with the console. But at this point, the developers have made their money. It is now Microsoft's problem to make sure that the XBox 360 can play all of those old games as a selling point.
So can Microsoft shrink down the elephantine XBox to fit inside of the XBox 360? Are they trying to emulate their old console? Given my experience with Microsoft, I'd guess the latter, and that doesn't bode well for their odds of success. Finally, given their current track record of completing software on time, (*cough* Longhorn *cough*) I don't see them finishing by November if they're still working on it.
